I'm an assistant LL coach. President of our league told us flat out: We can challenge an ump if they misinterpret a rule (each team gets a rule book), but we can't challenge their judgement (ie., if a person is safe or out based upon what they saw). If we give an umpire any shiat, they all have him on speed-dial, and he will have us removed. We can respectfully disagree in the case of a rule violation, and escalate that to the director on duty if necessary, but that's it.

I umpired little league games from 13-16. Never got punched, but god damn some parents were insufferable.

/It's really hard to speak up as a teenager when a 40 year old is red-faced and screaming.//They never made me overturn a call, but I should've ejected more than 1 middle-aged guy in my career///It's always the father trying to relive his glory days through his kid.////99% of those kids wind up f'd in the head, 1% actually make it. Either way the kid usually winds up despising the parent.

I'm an assistant LL coach. President of our league told us flat out: We can challenge an ump if they misinterpret a rule (each team gets a rule book), but we can't challenge their judgement (ie., if a person is safe or out based upon what they saw). If we give an umpire any shiat, they all have him on speed-dial, and he will have us removed. We can respectfully disagree in the case of a rule violation, and escalate that to the director on duty if necessary, but that's it.

I'm an assistant LL coach. President of our league told us flat out: We can challenge an ump if they misinterpret a rule (each team gets a rule book), but we can't challenge their judgement (ie., if a person is safe or out based upon what they saw). If we give an umpire any shiat, they all have him on speed-dial, and he will have us removed. We can respectfully disagree in the case of a rule violation, and escalate that to the director on duty if necessary, but that's it.

Is this the part where the coaches' real job is to teach how to respect authority and question it correctly without resorting to childish antics and/or violence, because they are role models?

All you middle aged moms/dads thinking of giving the teenage ump/ref a hard time over the baseball/basketball/hockey/soccer game. Don't, just don't.

Stop living out your dreams of pro sport glory through your kids. When you're that age, seeing someone's dad going after a teenager when you just came to have fun and enjoy a day out is really distressing. The number of people actually training to play pro one day is infinitely small. Some injustices in life are worth fighting over, a bad call by a teenager who is mostly doing it as a community service/first part time summer job is not one of them.

/played little league softball//dad was just happy to see me exercising and playing with others

Mister Buttons:I umpired little league games from 13-16. Never got punched, but god damn some parents were insufferable.

/It's really hard to speak up as a teenager when a 40 year old is red-faced and screaming.//They never made me overturn a call, but I should've ejected more than 1 middle-aged guy in my career///It's always the father trying to relive his glory days through his kid.////99% of those kids wind up f'd in the head, 1% actually make it. Either way the kid usually winds up despising the parent.[i.imgur.com image 224x224]

Ref'd two games for 7 yo girls soccer when I was in high school. You would have thought it was the World Cup. Had a mother threaten me after I called a hand ball.

Father in our town went to jail for attacking another coach with a baseball bat. New Jersey youth sports are serious business.

I'm an assistant LL coach. President of our league told us flat out: We can challenge an ump if they misinterpret a rule (each team gets a rule book), but we can't challenge their judgement (ie., if a person is safe or out based upon what they saw). If we give an umpire any shiat, they all have him on speed-dial, and he will have us removed. We can respectfully disagree in the case of a rule violation, and escalate that to the director on duty if necessary, but that's it.

Is this the part where the coaches' real job is to teach how to respect authority and question it correctly without resorting to childish antics and/or violence, because they are role models?

Would be cool if it is.

Mr. Dragon is an ump for LL/Babe Ruth/high school around here, and he's been doing it for something like 22 years now (9 locally). CSB, he's got a reputation for being a real hardass, he'll throw players for things like swearing at him, but he's also known for being very very good at running games. We know this because every now and again he'll hear a manager - usually a manager he's ejected in the past - telling his kids "okay guys, this ump is a real hardass but he's very good at his job. keep it classy, don't swear or horse around because he WILL nail you on it."

I cannot farking wait for him to wake up so I can show him this article. He'll blow his stack. I wanna see if he calls the NJ league to track this asshole manager down and eject him pre-emptively from ever coaching in MA.

/after every game i ask him "did you eject anyone today dear?"//it's rare and always deserved, he seldom even gets guff from the people///they know what they did/three slashies YER OUT

"Slapping someone isn't a felony, no matter how emotional you get" "It was a slap, not a punch. This coach is vermin, don't get me wrong, but let's not escalate this"

Slap, punch, what's the difference? Hitting someone is hitting someone, amount of force used and damage done is irrelevant. If I slapped someone for no good reason, I'd fully expect to get charged the same as if I hit them with my fist.

ArgusRun:Mister Buttons: I umpired little league games from 13-16. Never got punched, but god damn some parents were insufferable.

/It's really hard to speak up as a teenager when a 40 year old is red-faced and screaming.//They never made me overturn a call, but I should've ejected more than 1 middle-aged guy in my career///It's always the father trying to relive his glory days through his kid.////99% of those kids wind up f'd in the head, 1% actually make it. Either way the kid usually winds up despising the parent.[i.imgur.com image 224x224]

Ref'd two games for 7 yo girls soccer when I was in high school. You would have thought it was the World Cup. Had a mother threaten me after I called a hand ball.

Father in our town went to jail for attacking another coach with a baseball bat. New Jersey youth sports are serious business.

/It's a Jersey thing

===============

I grew up in Jersey. I started playing team sports as a kid and quit almost immediately because of the behavior of the putative adults involved in team sports. It wasn't fear, it was disgust and contempt for these people.

Most of my gym teachers were assholes. Most of the coaches were bigger assholes. A large number of parents were outright certifiable.

I used to umpire for five and six year olds. It was a nightmare. And if you tried to eject a coach you had to write an incident report, which was enough of a deterrent to keep me from doing it. Give me my $15 and let me leave when the game is over. But I had a friend who ejected a coach, except the coach refused to leave, and then refuse to sign the scorecard at the end of the game, which was how the umpires proved they were there and got paid.

My strategy whenever there was an argument was to just put the coaches against each other. "Hey Coach A, he never tagged the runner, but Coach B here thinks it was close enough for a five year old. So if you two can agree, I'll just go ahead and call your runner out?" Let them argue with each other for a few minutes while I got a cup of Gatorade.

My older brother's been coaching both of his kids' little league teams for the past few years and he's never had one bit of trouble with the teenage umpires. Other coaches and parents are a constant problem, but the umpires seem to really have their shiat together.

Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf:"Slapping someone isn't a felony, no matter how emotional you get" "It was a slap, not a punch. This coach is vermin, don't get me wrong, but let's not escalate this"

Slap, punch, what's the difference? Hitting someone is hitting someone, amount of force used and damage done is irrelevant. If I slapped someone for no good reason, I'd fully expect to get charged the same as if I hit them with my fist.

Don't be stupid. A punch can kill, a slap stings. There is a reason for different grades of assault. Your way of thinking would cause more "Well, if I'm gonna get in trouble anyway, might as well do some damage."

FarkinHostile:Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf: "Slapping someone isn't a felony, no matter how emotional you get" "It was a slap, not a punch. This coach is vermin, don't get me wrong, but let's not escalate this" Slap, punch, what's the difference? Hitting someone is hitting someone, amount of force used and damage done is irrelevant. If I slapped someone for no good reason, I'd fully expect to get charged the same as if I hit them with my fist. Don't be stupid. A punch can kill, a slap stings. There is a reason for different grades of assault. Your way of thinking would cause more "Well, if I'm gonna get in trouble anyway, might as well do some damage." Binary thinking is stupid.

Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf:"Slapping someone isn't a felony, no matter how emotional you get" "It was a slap, not a punch. This coach is vermin, don't get me wrong, but let's not escalate this"

Slap, punch, what's the difference? Hitting someone is hitting someone, amount of force used and damage done is irrelevant. If I slapped someone for no good reason, I'd fully expect to get charged the same as if I hit them with my fist.

Which is why if you're going to hit someone for no good reason, knock them the fark out.

/And don't stop hitting him when he's down. Make sure at least two people have to drag you off the unconscious body.

Mister Buttons:///It's always the father trying to relive his glory days through his kid.

Not always.CSB: My kid is 5 and playing his second year of teeball. One of the other children's parents was the only girl on my peewee team when I was like 7 or 8 years old. She went on to play every single year, moving from little league to JV and eventually varsity softball in high school. All-state and all that jazz.

At the first practice this year she got all up in the coach's face because they weren't pitching to her son. He's barely 4 and this is teeball. Yeah, we do try pitching to the kids eventually, but not at the first damned practice of the year, and not to a kid that can barely hold a bat and cries if mommy is more than 3 feet from him.

TL;DR-- it's not always dad. Sometimes it's mom that has to live vicariously through her whiny shiat of a kid. And she has that stupid "mommy bob" haircut that seems super popular among the a-cup yoga pants crowd. (not sure what that has to do with anything, just adds to her "I'm a twunt!" persona)

I had a friend was a big baseball playerback in high schoolHe could throw that speedball by youMake you look like a fool boySaw him the other night at this roadside barI was walking in, he was walking outWe went back inside sat down had a few drinksbut all he kept talking about was

[Chorus:]Glory days well they'll pass you byGlory days in the wink of a young girl's eyeGlory days, glory days

I used to ref soccer in middle and high school. You can actually make surprisingly good money but the bullshiat you have to put up with makes it not worth it.

It seems reffing and terrible parents/coaches is a sine graph. No one really gives a shiat before the kid is 9, then from 10 to about 18 everyone cares far too much, college and amateur is more relaxed assuming you are competent and know what you're doing, and then stuff like FIFA just gets insane and that's why it's a profession.

ArgusRun:Mister Buttons: I umpired little league games from 13-16. Never got punched, but god damn some parents were insufferable.

/It's really hard to speak up as a teenager when a 40 year old is red-faced and screaming.//They never made me overturn a call, but I should've ejected more than 1 middle-aged guy in my career///It's always the father trying to relive his glory days through his kid.////99% of those kids wind up f'd in the head, 1% actually make it. Either way the kid usually winds up despising the parent.[i.imgur.com image 224x224]

Ref'd two games for 7 yo girls soccer when I was in high school. You would have thought it was the World Cup. Had a mother threaten me after I called a hand ball.

Father in our town went to jail for attacking another coach with a baseball bat. New Jersey youth sports are serious business.

Well, it's terrible, but I'm imagining that the teenage umpire in question is the little farkwad they had on the bases when I played in the 14-15 league. (He was about 18, so he looked like a big farkwad at the time.)

As an introspective and bookish little fairy, I didn't have a lot of things going for me as a teenage boy, but I was a damn good first baseman and I had an Ichiro-like talent for hitting the ball just past where the second baseman could field it. (The difference being that 150' is where he's trying to hit the ball, whereas I was just hitting it as hard as I could.) And I figured out pretty quickly that the guys who otherwise would have bullied me were giving me some grudging credit as a sort of auxiliary jock when they made up their priority lists of who to fark with.

So when this ump's kid brother got picked off so badly that I actually had to run up to him to put the tag on him, five feet from the base, and that little shiat called him safe... long story short, it's twenty years later and I'm still pissed off. Also, asshole, I get that you were really proud of your Nelson concert t-shirt that you wore to every game, or maybe it was just the only shirt you owned, but you had shiatty taste in music, too.

semiotix:Well, it's terrible, but I'm imagining that the teenage umpire in question is the little farkwad they had on the bases when I played in the 14-15 league. (He was about 18, so he looked like a big farkwad at the time.)

As an introspective and bookish little fairy, I didn't have a lot of things going for me as a teenage boy, but I was a damn good first baseman and I had an Ichiro-like talent for hitting the ball just past where the second baseman could field it. (The difference being that 150' is where he's trying to hit the ball, whereas I was just hitting it as hard as I could.) And I figured out pretty quickly that the guys who otherwise would have bullied me were giving me some grudging credit as a sort of auxiliary jock when they made up their priority lists of who to fark with.

So when this ump's kid brother got picked off so badly that I actually had to run up to him to put the tag on him, five feet from the base, and that little shiat called him safe... long story short, it's twenty years later and I'm still pissed off. Also, asshole, I get that you were really proud of your Nelson concert t-shirt that you wore to every game, or maybe it was just the only shirt you owned, but you had shiatty taste in music, too.

On the other side, my son was playing his first season of hockey (he was 5) at the novice level against a team that had a couple 7 year olds that looked like they were growing their play-off beards. They were experienced players and were doing things that no other team in the novice league was doing, like, for example, skating backwards effectively, puck handling and passing. Oh, and they also were doing something else: checking. Not serious checking, but intentionally bumping to knock kids smaller than them down. Checking is not allowed for several years, but at novice there's also no penalties. And the refs (who were coaches) weren't doing anything.

Wow - that was raising my blood pressure. Sure, you've got a skilled team and they're playing a dominating game. There is no reason to let them check. Period.

Now, my son is s thinking player, so when he saw one of his team mates get checked, he chased down the perp and slap-shotted his skates out from under him. When I saw that, I went to his coach and asked that if he did that or any other intentional roughness that he should get pulled and benched for at least one rotation.

The little kids will fall all the time anyway on their own and they can feel it and fall fairly safely. When they get checked, they don't expect it and the fall is a lot more dangerous. So yeah, it's hard to keep your mouth shut under egregious circumstances, but taking it out on a teenager? No excuse.

I'm an assistant LL coach. President of our league told us flat out: We can challenge an ump if they misinterpret a rule (each team gets a rule book), but we can't challenge their judgement (ie., if a person is safe or out based upon what they saw). If we give an umpire any shiat, they all have him on speed-dial, and he will have us removed. We can respectfully disagree in the case of a rule violation, and escalate that to the director on duty if necessary, but that's it.

we don't even do that. It's little league, a game. A 17 year old high school student working part time as an umpire blows a call? Let it go. One call rarely decides a game. And if it does, that loss doesn't go on anyone's permanent record. Just let it go, man.

kudayta:Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf: "Slapping someone isn't a felony, no matter how emotional you get" "It was a slap, not a punch. This coach is vermin, don't get me wrong, but let's not escalate this"

Slap, punch, what's the difference? Hitting someone is hitting someone, amount of force used and damage done is irrelevant. If I slapped someone for no good reason, I'd fully expect to get charged the same as if I hit them with my fist.

Which is why if you're going to hit someone for no good reason, knock them the fark out.

/And don't stop hitting him when he's down. Make sure at least two people have to drag you off the unconscious body.

OK, I admit I had a poor choice of words. I now think I should have said that while amount of force used and damage done is relevant, whether the damage was done with an open hand or closed fist shouldn't matter.